Gender Equality in German Science

Research-oriented gender-equality standards developed by the German Research Foundation (DFG) have been accepted by the foundation's General Assembly. DFG is Germany's largest research-funding organization. The standards are expected to encourage universities and nonuniversity research institutions to promote equal rights for women and men in all areas of work. They call for institutional management to support women, promote work-life balance in research and science, and increase the proportion of professors and scientific managers who are women but leave it up to each institution to determine their own targets and courses of action. Implementation is to be completed by 2013 and will become a criterion considered for grants to universities and research institutions. "We need significantly more women in science and for science. The research-oriented gender-equality standards are a milestone on the way to achieving this," DFG President Matthias Kleiner says.